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Chicago Tribune

Chinese Women’s Deformed
Feet Have Comparison in Occident.

The tortured, deformed feet of the Chinese woman have long
been the objects of pious horror in the civilized world. They are pointed out as
a sad relic of barbarism, the extreme of personal vanity. We shudder at the
twisted stump, with toes doubled back and great cleft in the sole, and we watch
pityingly the tottering gait of the Chinese woman, with its absolute lack of
freedom of movement, while along State street every hour of the day hobble women
whose fashionable footgear, we are told by artists, chiropodists and orthopedic
specialists, hides deformities that are relatively as atrocious as those of the
Chinese.

Beneath the snug ties and trim boots are toes pinched and
twisted and joints diseased and enlarged by the constant wearing of shoes to
which the foot is forced to conform, since ultra-stylish footwear makes no
pretension of conforming to the foot. Clicking along on two or three inch wooden
heels, tortured toes rebelling at every step, ligaments strained and nerves
tingling, thousands of women bear these torments cheerfully for the satisfaction
of having a small, attractive foot.

Nor is it only the women who follow the extremes of
fashion, it seems, whose feet are misshapen and abused. Shoes too large or too
heavy and heels too low are as largely responsible for abnormal conditions as
are the other extremes. Women of the laboring classes, forced to be on their
feet a great deal and wearing the cheapest grade of shoes, bought for comfort
and durability, which would aw well fit a hitching post as a foot, are among the
greatest sufferers, while men, whose vanity takes the form of desiring a
substantial, sturdy underpinning, fall into the same error of getting the shoes
too large and too heavy in weight. Even children as young as 2 years have corns
and dislocations resulting from carelessly shod feet.

* *

Artists Find Few Perfect Feet

In perhaps nine cases out of ten feet are disfigured and
positively deformed by corns bunions, dislocations, great callouses, overlapping
toes, "hammer toes," so-called because the toe, usually the second, is pressed
back and upward until the tip rests on the ground; club nails, when the nail
becomes thick and brittle and hard as bone — and ingrowing nails, which
fortunately are now curable by less stringent measures than were formerly
employed, when the whole nail was pulled off.

Artists declare it is now almost impossible to find a foot
of perfectly proportions and foresee a time when they will be driven to the feet
of classic sculpture as their only models. Bourgereau’s famous painting, "The
Bathers," might be said to illustrate this deterioration in the beauty of the
foot. The chief criticism of the beautiful painting has been that the ankle of
the woman bending over is too thick and the small toe is curled under, until it
looks like a tiny pink snail shell. Even Corot, whose painting of a young girl
about to bathe in a nearby stream, which is tucked in a corner of the field room
at the Art Institute, seems to have painted from a model whose foot was
disfigured by a fairly well developed bunion!

And small wonder, indeed, if the foot has not been able to
withstand the eccentric abuse to which it has been submitted since the days when
sandal strode through the streets of Greece and Rome, and Julius Caesar is said
to have trod majestically on soles of gold.

**

Sandals Underwent Many Changes.

Though at first simple in form, the sandal underwent many
variation and every grade of military and civil life was known by the manner in
which feet were clothed. The straps were often highly colored or studded with
metal or jewels. But these sandals, which protected the feet from contact with
the ground, were finally, owing to the rigors of climate, superseded by a sort
of shoe of leather with an upper part of silk, cloth or leather, reaching
sometimes to the need. These allowed great latitude for fancy and were gayly
embroidered in many hues. Sometimes shoes, or rather boots, as these were of
contrasting colors were worn, a fashion which was made more than fleeting by the
familiar costume of the king’s jester.

Up to this time the sole of the shoe had conformed
generally to the shape of the foot, but a certain count of Anjou, we are told,
being the unfortunate possessor of goodly sized bunions, conceived the notion of
having the soles of his shoe extended into a long point, which tended to hid his
deformity. The shade of the count had doubtless smiled down through the ages, at
the multitudes who are literally following in his aching footsteps. Or perhaps
in the purgatory of fops he is made to suffer sympathetic pangs with each devoté
of the "pointed toe."

The pointed toes are carried to such an extreme that it
was necessary to stuff them with moss to retain their shape and finally they
were chained to the knee to facilitate walking! The clergy were forbidden to
wear them and it can readily be seen that they were some hindrance to devotional
exercises. At last fines were imposed for wearing boot toes over two inches in
length, which sounded a temporary death knell.

* *

King Henry Partially Responsible

Now it seems that Henry VIII had feet whose misshapen
contours could best be concealed by shoes with wide soles and broad toes, so
shortly shoes had spread out to such an alarming extent it was necessary to
impose a fine regulating the width of shoes! About the time the Venetian and
Persian women began to wear chopinays, which were cylindrical blocks of wood,
worn under the shoes and curiously painted and gilded. A woman’s rank was
indicated by the height of her chopinays, so it was only a matter of time before
they had reached such extremes that the women had to be supported as they
walked.

These grotesque stilts can still be seen worn by women in
the Holy Land at the present day. The heel seems to have been a result of the
modification of the chopinay and the exaggeration of the corked shoes, which had
a thick pad of cork on the sole, rising considerably toward the heel. The French
heel appeared about 1780 and has held its own up to the present day, although
about ten years after its introduction a decided change occurred in the shoe
fashions and low heels were favored for awhile.

Prof. Thomas has the following to say as to the psychology
of the heel:

"Relatively small and weak hands and feet are another
distinctive mark of woman, and to render these more dainty has been another
persistent effort of fashion. High heels, like long skirts, add to this apparent
magnitude of woman, and at the same time give her a delicate and distinguished
underpinning. If, then, a woman walks on her toes and places the heel of the
shoe under her instep instead of under the heel, and if the skirt so covers the
foot that the shoe heel seems directly under the real heel, we get the spectacle
of a small foot indeed. The shortened length attained by Chinese women through
doubling the toes back is secured by western woman by means of the high and
illusorily placed heel."

* *

Small Toe Remains Intact

Has this constant skipping from one extremity of form to
another, with the foot constantly striving to adjust itself to cramped
imprisonment, resulted in developing a race of splay, or flat, footed
individuals whose feet have been tortured out of all semblance to beauty? Some
scientists would have use believe that it is only a matter of time until the
small toe will have entirely disappeared — that many people now have no trace of
nail upon it.

A prominent chiropodist says, however, that in the sixteen
years he has practiced he has noticed not the slightest cause for alarm on that
score, and that he has yet to find anyone without a nail on the small toe. The
flesh crowding over the nail keeps it in a soft condition, when it is easily
broken off, but so long as the matrix of the nail remains the nail will continue
to grow. he has noted, however, the increase in the number of persons having the
arch of the foot broken down, as a bow straightens out when the bow string is
cut, and he says he sees a foot with a well defined arch only about once a
month.

This condition of flat foot is more prevalent among
peasants and farmers who are on their feet constantly, straining unduly the
ligaments which support the arch, until they sag, as it were. Of course this
condition is exaggerated when there is general malnutrition of the nerves, as
among the poorer classes. Orthopedic specialists say that high heels strain and
weaken the ligaments of the arch and in time produce flat foot.

* *

Revolution in Footgear Necessary

If, indeed, conditions are as serious as they seem, what
is to bring about a revolution in footgear which will prevent the complete
demoralization of our feet? Perhaps a revival of the ancient art of pedomancy
made an anthropological science and admitted to the ranks of the "ologies" as "pedology."
And why not? Although the feet have been maltreated for centuries, essential
characteristics remain as various and doubtless interpretive as the lines of the
palm. Shoemakers tell us that in measuring the feet they find no two persons
with exactly the same measurements. Some day, no doubt, great tables of
statistics will be formed of the measurements of feet of statesmen and musicians
and artists and criminals and lunatics from which the science of "pedology" will
be derived.

We have only to study the sculpture of both the old and
the new master to realize that they appreciated keenly the distinct
characteristics of the feet of various casts and the importance of the foot as
an aid in delineating moods and emotions. For example, note the invariably long,
muscular, almost bony, feet of the Greek athletes, in the well known statues of
the "Dying Gladiator," "The Discus Thrower," and "The Wrestlers," And you will
find the satyrs and all the states of Mars, the god of war, and of Hermes,
represented with broad, proportionately short feet, while Apollo and Morpheus
and other gods, typifying the more spiritual manifestation, have slim, narrow,
high arched feet.

In that famous group, "The Laoccoon of Troy," the feet of
the father give mute but powerful testimony to the great nervous agony of the
doomed man. In direct contrast to their tense exertion are the feet of the
bronze "Drunken Faun," masterpieces in the portrayal of licentious abandon.

* *

Significance May Be Learned.

Perhaps some day we will have learned the significance of
long feet and short feet, narrow and broad feet, long toes and short toes, high
arch and low, nails flat and curved — and the various meanings which may be
attached to the way in which people put their weight on their feet — whether
with the greater share of it along the line of the great toe or more evenly
distributed.

An illustration of this is found in two modern pieces of
sculpture — that of "Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii," by Randolph Rogers,
whose fleeing feet seem to bear her weight on their inner side, and "Diana and
the Lion," by Edwin Elwell, in which the delicatd feet of the goddess rest quite
squarely on the ground.

With the return of interest in the beauty and character of
the foot it may become quite the fad for society women to engage the services of
a mystic "pedologist" in place of the passé
palmist, and about the time when another revival of the Greek fashions is upon
us guests bidden to the reception of the Anglicized Roman villa of the leader of
the social world may tread the mosaic floors with sandals rivaling the splendor
the classic footgear of the long distant past.

How many of us today would care to display our poor
crippled feet in shoes which revealed rather than concealed their unsightliness?

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